Did the press comply with an HIV witch-hunt in Greece?

When hundreds of women were rounded up in a police sweep in central Athens days before the May 2012 parliamentary elections, the move had all the hallmarks of a politically orchestrated campaign. The arrests preceded the release of figures showing a 57 per cent increase in HIV infections between 2010 and 2011, and the women were forced to take HIV tests.

Despite a lack of evidence, those who tested positive were imprisoned and charged with intentionally causing grievous bodily harm. When state and private television networks went ahead and published the women’s mugshots and personal details, labelling them “HIV-infected prostitutes”, many saw it as evidence of a compliant press.

The mainstream media soon lost interest in the story, staying silent when most of the women were gradually released or had the charges against them reduced, but now Zoe Mavroudi, a Greek filmmaker, has directed a film on the subject – Ruins: Chronicle of an HIV Witch-Hunt.

When I spoke to her on Skype shortly after the Greek premiere of Ruins, she told me how she had noticed that the case was still being discussed widely on social media. “People seemed to be harking back to it to express disgust for state and police arbitrariness. I sensed that the incident had become one of the most recognisable low points of the crisis,” she said. “I wanted to create a chronicle, a kind of reference point that would help people to understand and not forget.”

Made with the support of the Unite union and Union Solidarity International, the film includes interviews with two of the women who were imprisoned, along with their mothers, as well as academics and activists.

The interviews are intercut with footage that shows journalists and commentators referring to the women as “Aids prostitutes” who “spread death”.

The women’s case has now been taken to the European Court of Human Rights.

More than 30 per cent of Greek women are unemployed, compared to 24.6 per cent of men, and more than 65 per cent of young women are out of work. They are also affected by falling standards in maternity care and cuts to services for the sick and elderly. More and more young people are returning to live in the family home.

“Greece is a very traditional society,” Mavroudi said, “and when you have the dismantling of social services . . . the burden falls on women even more than usual.

“The feminist movement in Greece has been caught off guard by the crisis,” she added.

The arrests were condemned by some female MPs and several protests were held outside one courthouse and the ministry of health in Athens.

Mavroudi hopes that next time women will be better prepared. “This case in particular was unprecedented, targeted state aggression against women,” she said.

“Without a strong and well-organised feminist movement, we cannot deal with this new reality.”

On Tuesday night, Abdalaziz Alhamza, from the Syrian campaign organisation Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), received the prestigious Marie Colvin Award at the British Journalism Awards on behalf of the group.

RBSS has been reporting from the northern Syrian city, Islamic State's de facto capital, since 2014 on the violence carried out both by the extremist group and the regime of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The independent organisation comprises 18 journalists based in Raqqa who are supported by 10 more journalists, who publish and translate their findings between Arabic and English, and help their reports reach a wider global audience. The RBSS Twitter feed has almost 70,000 followers, and their Facebook page has over 560,000 likes, marking them as a major news source for the area.

Speaking at the British Journalism Awards on Tuesday, Alhamza said: “In 2014, we realised two important things: the first is that the outside world was not going to help us, and the second is that we had to do something. Anything. So we created RBSS.”

Alhamza further explained the campaign group's aims:

“Our goal was not only to expose IS criminality, but also to resist them. We did that by capturing and distributing images and videos of life in Raqqa under IS.”

“My colleagues and I never thought or even could imagine the level of suffering our people has been subjected to in the last five years. We learned the hard way that freedom doesn’t come cheap.”

“The scenes of extreme violence and humiliation the group visited on our city’s people. We wanted to make sure the world – even if it wasn’t going to help us – knew what was going on.

Though constantly living under threat, Alhamza’s speech last night showed the pride and importance that RBSS place on publishing the horrors of daily life within Syria.

“Our work shows that we can fight arms with words, and that ultimately is the only way to defeat them, and IS knows it.